There is nothing more satisfying than claiming to be the first at anything, and so far this week, Samsung must be pretty happy with itself. After announcing its plans to mass produce AMOLED touchscreens, the first to include built-in touch functions, Samsung’s S8500 will be the first consumer handset to feature Bluetooth 3.0. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group, or SIG, has approved version 3.0 for the handset and also slipped out a few details on the phone.
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Standard, boring LED screens: your days are numbered! Samsung announced today that it will begin mass producing AMOLED displays with touch functions built right in. The displays will be 3.3″ WVGA touchscreens that will be, thanks to the AMOLED technology, much thinner than your average touchscreen display on current phones. The beauty of this technology is that it produces thinner, brighter and more vivid displays because it doesn’t require the additional touch input layer on top of the screen. Samsung managed to place a touch sensor over the mirror display and made it evaporate, leaving just a 0.001mm thick sensor over the display.
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Hey, good on Samsung for trying to make their own OS. I’m sure it will be wonderful for them. It saves them from having to, I don’t know, use Android? But what’s with all the Nokia Series 60 font usage in the UI?
These screenshots, which are floating around right now, show some of the UI elements of the new OS, Bada. The font they’re using is approximately (or exactly, I’m not a font scientist (fontographer?)) the same font used on most Series 60 Symbian phones.
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Well here’s ones way to get your “brand” out there. Samsung will install its mobile chargers (you might have seen them at airports here and there) at 15 colleges around the U.S. That’s just step one. Step two is installing said chargers at more than 50 colleges around the country.
You knew this was coming. Someone’s driving a car. They’re talking on their cellphone, too. The car crashes. It crashes into another car. The driver of the other car dies. And now the family of the killed driver wants to sue someone. That “someone” just so happens to be the wireless provider and the manufacturer of the phone.
After we found out about the Samsung Trance’s then-impending software update a little early, I honestly didn’t expect to hear about it again. If things had gone smoothly, I probably wouldn’t have.
Attention Battlestar Galactica Android OS fans, Samsung has just taken the wraps off its newest Android-powered smartphone, the Galaxy Spica. By the sound of that name, it appears the Cylons have taken control of Samsung’s mobile division.
The newest soldier in the ever-growing ‘droid army features a 800MHz processor (just like its Moment sibling) and is the first Android smartphone to include native DivX support (so you won’t have to convert your downloaded collection of BSG to watch on the go!). Along with the improved codec support, the Galaxy Spica (GS) also touts other improved multimedia-centric features like the inclusion of DNSe 2.0 for “better sound quality” and 3.5 mm jack for use with your favorite headphones.
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As Sesame Street is currently celebrating its 40th anniversary now seems like as good a time as any for us to practice our counting…of mobile operating systems/platforms. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Darn, my hand ran out of fingers! Well, no matter, Samsung thinks there is plenty of room for more and has taken the wraps off its own, new open mobile platform, bada.
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You’re looking at the latest fashion phone that’s sure to find its way into celebrities’ gift bags at the end of fancy yacht parties. It’s the product of a collaboration between Armani, Samsung and Microsoft. That’s right: a €700 phone that runs WinMo 6.5. Oh, dear.
![Screen shot 2009-10-06 at [ October 6 ] 11.53.59 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Screen-shot-2009-10-06-at-October-6-11.53.59-AM-173x300.png "Screen shot 2009-10-06 at [ October 6 ] 11.53.59 AM")
And Windows Mobile 6.5 Day keeps on rollin’! Further proving that the mobile phone industry is complete out of names to use, Sprint and Samsung have just announced a device they’ve decided to dub the “Intrepid”.
While we wouldn’t have guessed it at first glance, that 2.5″ screen is actually a touchscreen. They’ve got a full QWERTY keyboard down below that, with a 3.2 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, and microSD slot tucked inside.
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And here I thought the megapixel race was over! Guess not, what with Samsung showing off, for the very first time, the SCH-W880, the world’s first cellphone with a 12-megapixel camera. Because how many times have you said to yourself, “Man, I want to take a photo of this unusual drink, but only have the iPhone’s rubbish camera”?
Sprint may not be the number one mobile carrier, but it sure does seem to be picking up the slack in the handset department recently. The Now Network is expected to get yet another new mobile in the form of the Samsung Instinct HD.
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Mobile phone manufacturers are usually not the most generous when it comes to providing OS updates for older smartphones. That fact didn’t stop a curious Samsung Omnia i900 owner in the Netherlands from contacting his local Samsung branch about the upcoming release of WinMo 6.5.
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Take a look over at that phone to the right. Can you name it? Yes, yes – it’s obviously a Samsung. But can you name the model? We haven’t covered this phone much here at MobileCrunch; no mobile blog outside of the Samsung-specific blogs have, really. But that hasn’t kept it from being a raging success.
Samsung announced this morning that this phone – which, by the way, is the ….
Damn it, Samsung. Really? You’re carrying on with this “Messager” non-sense? Yeah, yeah, it’s a perfectly valid (if obsolete) synonym for “Messenger”, but so is “crier”. You probably wouldn’t call a phone the Samsung Crier, would you?
Oh well; names aside, MetroPCS’ new Messsenger .. Massager .. Messager’s toting a slide out QWERTY keyboard, EV-DO, and a 2 mp camera. The phone will set you back $149 – but considering it’s on MetroPCS and is thus contract-free, that’s not too bad at all.
While we’re not exactly impressed with the overall look of Samsung’s upcoming budget-friendly touchscreen, the S3650 Corby, that doesn’t keep us from getting excited when it gets caught behind a camera lens. The design of the battery cover is ever-so-slightly different than the one we saw before, implying that this may be a prototype.
Final hardware or not, it brings a friend.
What’s black, yellow, red, and just a wee bit ugly all over? If you guessed the Samsung S3650 Corby, good job! We also would have accepted “Clint Howard wearing a bumblebee suit and a red fedora.”
The Corby, pictured here, rides that fine line between “Budget featurephone” and “Phone you’ll still like 6 months from now” quite well. Its got quad-band GSM, a 2.8″ QVGA touchscreen, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, a 2MP camera, and FM radio. Alas, it’s all packed behind Samsung’s proprietary OS running TouchWiz to the core, so what you see up front is pretty much what you get – at least until Samsung launches TouchWiz widget downloads, that is. Rumors pin this thing at around $200 sans contract, though no price has been officially confirmed.
[AreaMobile via SamsungHub]
Well, that’s a nice change of pace. We generally have to turn to UK handset retailers to spill the beans on new phones ahead of schedule; this time around, it’s Best Buy with the loose lips.
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All of the signs (that is, all of the leaks) told us to expect the T-Mobile Gravity 2 to launch on August 19th. We’re just a few hours into August 19th, and sure enough: we just got word that the Gravity 2 is now available.
Coming in at $29.99 (after a $50 mail in rebate and a 2 year contract) and being pitched as an “affordable messaging phone”, don’t expect much more beyond the basics. On the upside, it does come in “berry mauve” and “metallic pumpkin”, the latter of which would make a totally bitchin’ band name.
Check out the full release after the jump.
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If the “S” in “iPhone 3G S” stands for speed, we’re going to wager that the “Q” in “Instinct Q” stands for QWERTY. And if it doesn’t? We don’t really care, because BAM! QWERTY KEYBOARD!
After the release of the touch-only myTouch and Hero, we were starting to wonder when we’d see another Android handset with a QWERTY keyboard beyond the G1 – and here it is in all of its glory by way of Phandroid. The Sprint logos adorning the face should come as no surprise; it is an Instinct, after all.
We can’t wait to use that keyboard. Helio Ocean-esque keys complete with a full number row? Yes, please.
